A Cowboy’s life: Former R.L. Turner teacher turns love for words into a retiree occupation
By Katy Moore, Staff Writer Jul 17, 2007

A Cowboy’s life: Former R.L. Turner teacher turns love for words into a retiree occupation

Author Mike Kearby looks like he might belong in one of his Western-themed novels.

The West Texas resident and Mineral Wells native typically sports a cowboy hat, whether at home on his Stephens County ranch or speaking to students in schools across the state.

Kearby, a former reading and English teacher for Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD, splits his time between tending his West Texas ranch, doing speaking engagements at Texas schools, including one at Hebron High School, and researching his next Western-themed young adult novels.

The former R.L. Turner High School teacher turned author completed his fourth young adult literature effort, “The 13th Baktun,” and plans for another novel are in the works, he said.

Kearby’s interest in young adult literature stemmed from his work as a teacher. Kearby got his start in teaching at Perry Middle School where he taught English in 1975. From 1976 to 1978, he taught reading at R.L. Turner when it was the city’s only high school, and he taught there again from 1980 to 1984.

As a speaker, Kearby talks to young people about reading and aims to get them excited about literature. He addressed students in more than 60 school districts across the state last year, always dressed in his typical cowboy gear. He said the reaction from students has been positive so far, so he counts himself as blessed.

“I had, knock on wood, really good success with this,” he said. “I’ve spoken to groups of as many as 270 seventh-graders at a time. I think the whole thing is that kids know if you know what you’re talking about, and kids know if you’re excited about what you’re talking about.”

Kearby certainly conveys that excitement, as he aims to impart a love for reading to Texas students.

At 55, Kearby is retired, but only sort of. He travels giving talks on the importance of reading in schools all over the state, collecting tidbits of history from all regions and works to knit together historically based fiction geared toward students, particularly boys, in seventh through 12th grades.

“Though they’re actually geared to seventh to 12th graders, what we find, though, is that because we’re writing to that age group, because there’s not a lot of cursing or sex, the people who used to enjoy a lot of the old westerns like Louis L’Amore enjoy those books, too,” Kearby said. “I had an idea that the schools weren’t teaching reading anymore, and I wanted to see if kids were reading anymore.”

Kearby and his wife, Raye, moved to their place in a tiny community called Necessity, Texas, in 2004 because his father was ill. They had grown used to living in large cities, so moving to the former boomtown oil field turned ghost town was a bit of a shock, he said.

“My dad had some land in this area, and about seven or eight years ago, he was diagnosed as terminally ill, and I was the only one in my family who could kind of pick up and go,” Kearby explains. “So, we packed up and bought some land in the area to be with my dad before he died.”

Now, several years later, Kearby says he and his wife love the quiet of the country life, which, incidentally, happens to lend itself nicely to the Western-themed novels Kearby spends him time writing.

“When we first came here, we didn’t know how long we would stay, if we would stay, because we were kind of accustomed to being in the city,” he said. “We kind of fell in love with it, and love the land. It’s also very conducive to writing, because it’s so quiet, not a lot of distraction.”

When Kearby began pursuing writing, he did so rather out of a sense of responsibility, to see if he could help encourage teenagers to make reading a part of their lives.

He began interviewing librarians and educators who frequently interact with middle and high school students. They consistently said the same thing: teenaged boys weren’t reading anymore.

Kearby took it upon himself to figure out what teenaged boys would be willing to read and combined that knowledge with his passion for Texas history. Fellow educators informed Kearby that they needed more stories of protagonists of diverse backgrounds.

That insight gave Kearby the information he needed to get started and resulted in his first three books, “Ride the Desperate Trail,” “The Road to a Hanging” and “Ambush at Mustang Canyon.”

“That kind of gave me a start, and I decided if I write something that the librarians ask for, that’s something the schools can use,” Kearby said. “That’s where the trilogy of books came from.”

The three novels focus on a Texas hero, an ex-slave who settles in West Texas.

“It’s almost a historical look through a fictional character,” Kearby says of the trilogy. “You have the end of the Civil War, and the last book ends with the Red River Uprising and how the government fought the native people and forced them to move into reservations.”

Kearby’s books hover at about 200 pages each, which, he says is in an effort to invite younger readers. The cover art also aims to be enticing and interesting, utilizing Western-themed art from the library of Congress.

“To help teachers, we also put discussion questions in the back of the book along with a glossary of terms, slang or even Indian words, so that teachers won’t have to do as much research,” Kearby adds.

Kearby says his work is based on the idea that if students can learn to appreciate reading at a young age, they will read for life. That, he says, it what just may be missing from Texas education.

“The purpose of education is to encourage a student to seek knowledge for the rest of his life,” Kearby said. “If we do that, if we remain positive and teach them to read and write and not put too much pressure on kids, the rest will fall into place.”

Contact staff writer Katy Moore at [email protected] or at 972-628-4087.